Changing of the Guard

16

It was getting late, well past quitting time, and Thorn was ready to head home, when he looked up to see Marissa Lowe standing in the doorway of his office.

“I should have called,” she said. “I’m sorry to hear about Gridley,” Marissa said.

Thorn waved her in. She plopped onto the couch.

“Yeah,” he said. “The doctors say they don’t know when he’ll come out of it. Or if he will. He has an old trauma — apparently he got his brain zapped a while back, had an induced stroke — and there’s a worry that the previous injury might somehow be causing problems.” He noticed a slight hint of musk in the air — her perfume?

“You trace the bug?”

“FBI knows where it came from — it’s a commercial unit, nothing real esoteric, sold retail in New York three months ago — but no record of who bought it. A cash sale, and no security cam in the store — which, of course, is a selling point with their customers. Could be anybody.”

“So what now?”

“We’re running through Jay’s files, as best we can. Haven’t found anything worth shooting him for yet.”

She shook her head, glanced down at her watch. “Well, I was just in the neighborhood, and I’ve taken more of your time than I should. I ought to run.”

He paused. He was intrigued by her, he had to admit, and maybe more than intrigued. A part of him wanted to ask her to stay, ask her to dinner, ask her home for the evening, but there was already too much happening too fast.

So, “All right,” was all he said. “It’s been a pleasure.”

Kent was not a fanatic about exercise, and he didn’t expect that a man his age was going to be able to run with twenty-year-old jocks; still, he believed that sitting behind a desk didn’t mean you should turn into a slug, either. He made it a point to hit the obstacle course a couple-three times a week, and to do enough physical training so that if he had to run up a flight of stairs, he wouldn’t keel over from exhaustion. He wasn’t in the shape he’d been in thirty years ago, but he could keep up with any man his age, and some a lot younger.

This particular evening was drizzly and cold, and the steel chin-up bar was wet and rough under his hands. There were the usual die-hards out, even in the gathering darkness, but a lot of the fair-weather athletes were foregoing the pleasure.

His arms burned as he finished his set of chins, and his breath came and went faster than he would have liked. If he lived to be as old as his father, he had another twenty-five years, thirty if he made it to Grampa Jonathan’s age. He was on the downhill slope, no way around that, but staying fit as long as he could was important. His grandfather had been spry until he died of a heart attack in his sleep, and his old man had gone bowling the day before he passed. You worked with what you had.

He gathered himself for his second set of chins. This new job wasn’t the same as those he’d done in the Corps, but there were some good troops on hand, and the chance of getting to a hot zone leading them — that had been part of the deal. His option, Howard had told him. You can sit at HQ and direct things long-distance, or you can suit up and lead in the field. No question but that getting his boots muddy was the choice he’d make, and staying fit was part of that. You didn’t want to be the guy the men were having to carry when they went into harm’s way.

The second set came hard. He would have done ten more, but at eight, the burn was too much. He gutted that one out, but he was done. He let go, dropped back to the ground, and shook his head. There was a time when he would have done three, four sets, run the course, come back and finished off with another set.

He shook his head. That had been a while. Then again, a man his age who could do eighteen chins? That wasn’t so bad. It was all relative, wasn’t it? At least he could still hear — John Howard was sporting a hearing aid, from too many guns having gone off too close to his head. And he didn’t need glasses, except to read. Best to be thankful for what you have than to complain about what you didn’t.

He took a moment to slow his breathing, then made ready to start the course. It was the usual kind of thing — logs and ropes and barricades to clamber over, tire hopping, crawling under razor wire. More than you were apt to run into on any field of combat, urban or country, but that was the point.

The rain began to come down a little harder, not a deluge, but enough to soak everything. Fine. It did rain on the battlefield now and then — he’d even been caught in a frog-drowner of a thunderstorm in a Middle Eastern desert once, a freak thing in which four men had been swept away when a flash flood had caught them in a low spot. You never knew what God was going to throw at you, and like the Boy Scout he had been, “Be prepared” was still his motto.

He headed for the first obstacle.

The rain was coming down in buckets as the limo pulled up to his front door. Hans, the butler, alerted by the chauffeur’s call, stood on the porch with a huge golf umbrella, and was at the car’s door before Cox opened it.

Cox alighted and allowed Hans to keep most of the rain off as they splashed through a puddle and onto the porch.

“Nasty weather,” Cox said.

“Yes, sir.”

Inside, Cox let Hans take his raincoat. As he headed for the study, he saw Laura on the phone in the hallway. She looked up, smiled and waved, and went back to her conversation.

In his study, Cox pulled a cigar from his walk-in humidor, one of the smaller Cubans, clipped the end with a platinum cutter given to him by the Prince of Wales, wet the tip, and used a wooden match to light it — after letting the match’s odor burn off. He puffed on the cigar. Blue smoke wreathed his head. Ah.

“Knock, knock?”

He looked up to see Laura standing in the doorway. She still had her figure after all these years, a handsome woman. “I thought you had a thing this evening?”

“Aid to Rwanda Medical committee meeting,” she said. “It’s been cancelled, due to the weather. The storm moving in could drop two or three inches of rain. Nobody wants to be out driving around in that. Do you have plans for dinner?”

“Not really. I thought I’d have Martina cook a chicken or something.”

“I’ll join you, if that’s all right?”

“That would be nice.” It had been perhaps three weeks since they’d had dinner together.

“I’ll speak to Martina. We can catch up — I talked to Sarah today, I have the latest on little Joseph and William. About an hour?”

He puffed on the cigar and nodded. “Sounds good.”

Once Laura was gone, he knocked the ash off the cigar. He’d only smoke half of it, if that. Too much tobacco and alcohol were killers, he knew that, and he only indulged himself in either infrequently. Half a stogie, twice a week, no more than one or two drinks a day. Coupled with the exercise, he felt as if that was about right.

At dinner, Laura was chatty. He heard all about the grandchildren, their latest adventures, and what his son and daughter-in-law were up to. He mentioned some of his business dealings, but as always, Laura’s eyes seemed to glaze over, and her smile became fixed. She had no ears for industry, never had, even in the early days. If he was happy and enjoying his work, that was enough for her. He could have done a lot worse for a spouse, and, of course, it had been her family’s company that had been his launching pad; he would always owe her for that.

He smiled as she talked about schools and science projects, nodding at the appropriate times. He had not been a particularly attentive father, and while he enjoyed seeing the grandchildren, he didn’t think about them much. His passion had been the job, and through that, he had managed to provide the best of everything for his children and their children. When he was gone, they would have to work at spending it all before they died, and with even cursory management, the fortune he had amassed would last for as long as there were heirs to inherit it.

The one flaw in the perfect tapestry that was his life was this spy business. And he had decided that he was going to deal with that the way he had dealt with every other problem. Whatever it took to resolve it, he would do. He had been taking steps in that direction for some time, without tangible results, but it was only a matter of time before he had what he needed. Once that happened, Eduard would be put into play. And the Net Force people would not be outing him, either. He had a hammer that could squash dinosaurs, and if he had to use it, then that’s what he would do.

He had to remind himself from time to time in this situation that he was one of the most powerful men on the planet. That he was very nearly bulletproof.

He nodded at Laura. “Good to hear they are doing so well,” he said.

She smiled in return. “More wine?”

“Perhaps just a bit more.”

Hans appeared as if by magic, bottle in hand, to pour. Life was almost perfect. Almost.